gyo | Baldock Allotment Association

April 17, 2019February 3, 2021

What to do on your plot in April

Spring is here with warmer days, lighter evenings and daffodils and tulips blooming. April can be a busy month with seeds to sow and jobs to do around the plot. The lighter evenings also help as there is more time to work in our gardens or plots! April is also a good time to cut the grass and weed regularly and plant perennials for the summer months.

If your daffodils or tulips have finished flowering, now is the perfect time to deadhead the old flowers. This is important so all the energy can go in to the bulb to produce good flowers next year. You should also allow for the stems and leaves to die back naturally. Once the foliage has died back naturally, you can lift it and store it dry and plant it again in the autumn. Of course, if you would prefer, you can leave them in the ground. I plan to lift mine to make more space to grow other crops.

Now is a good time to plant out second earlies, salad and main crop potatoes. Some seed companies suggested waiting to plant main crop as there is no rush to plant them out. You can dig a trench 6 inches deep and place the seed potatoes inside the trench about 12 inches apart and 3 ft between the rows. Main crop potatoes should be spaced at least 18 inches apart to ensure larger potatoes. Or why not try the no dig method? To do this use a dibber to make a 6 inch hole and drop the seed potato into the hole. Click here to find out more information about no dig potatoes. Potatoes are hungry plants and it’s best to plant in well-rotted manure or compost. It might be a good idea to add fish blood and bone, which can be found at our members’ shop for £0.70 a kg. Click here for more information on the fertilisers we sell in the members’ shop and how to use them.

Sweet peas can be planted out in the middle of April. Sweet peas like rich soil, so it’s a good idea to plant in rotted manure or compost and provide them with support to get them off to a good start and you will be rewarded with many flowers.

Now is a great time to harvest the first of asparagus. We’ve had some cold nights, especially at North Road allotment site and its important to protect the asparaus spears by covering it with a fleece. If you want to plant asparagus, April is the last month you can do this. Dig a V shape trench about 8 inches deep and 30cm wide. Create a mound of compost about 7 inches high along the bottom of the trench for the crowns to rest upon. Cover the roots with soil and press firmly and water well. April is the time to harvest spring cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, kale and any remaining leeks you have.

Grass paths or lawns will need to be mowed this month. Resist the temptation to cut quite low, like you would in the summer. It’s much better to mow the lawn quite high to even the grass and when the weather warms up next month, you can cut lower. This will result in a greener and healthier lawn.

Now is a good time to prune cherry and plum trees as they’re growing. You should do this once the leaf buds have opened. Click here to find out how to prune plum trees. Click here to find out how to prune cherry trees.

You should also harden off young plants before planting them outside. Bring the plants outside in the day when it’s warm outside and bring it back in again at night. This will allow young plants to slowly accustom to lower temperatures. Alternatively, cold frames and cloches can be used by opening them in the day and closing them at night.

Now is a good time to plant flowers such as lilies, gladioli and dahlias. Make sure you have good drainage, especially if you’re putting the bulbs in pots or containers because they may rot. Bulbs are usually planted down three times their height and one bulb apart, but it’s best to check the instructions your bulbs came with. Make sure you plant in compost or well-rotted manure. Why not stagger your planting to enjoy blooms all summer?

April is a good time to get ahead and start your seeds. I’ve already sown courgettes and pumpkins indoors and chard and spinach outdoors. See a list of seeds you can sow this month. Click here to have a look at the sowing and harvest chart.

Sow indoors

Cucumbers
Courgettes
French beans
Marrows
Melons
Runner beans
Squash
Pumpkins
Tomatoes

Sow outdoors:

Beetroot
Chard
Carrots
Lettuce
Leeks
Radish
Peas
Turnip
Spinach

Click here to see a full list of seeds you can sow this month.

March 12, 2019November 5, 2020

What to do on your plot in March

Finally, winter is beginning to recede, we can now begin to sow seeds and plant outdoors. However, we must take in to consideration the weather we had last year. With the freezing temperatures and snow from the Beast from the East! Traditionally, March is a good time to plant out your first early potatoes that have been chitting away. It’s best to do this at the end of the month but check the ground is not too wet and take in to consideration anything Mother Nature has in store for us.

If you have bought some onions and shallots from the members’ shop, now is a good time to plant them out. Make sure that you cover them with netting to protect your onions and shallots from the birds. I have learnt the hard way! They love to pull them out of the ground! If the ground is too wet, it might be better to plant onions or shallots in small pots or seed trays with multi-purpose compost in a greenhouse or in a cold frame to get them started.

If you have not bought your onions or shallots sets yet, we still have some in stock that you can buy any Sunday 10am-12pm at the members’ shop. Click here to find out more information on our current stock.

If you have over wintering brassicas, it’s a good time to give them a feed of sulphate of ammonia. Sulphate of ammonia is a fast-acting nitrogen fertiliser which encourages leafy growth. This is particularly useful for the brassica family as well as lettuce, spinach, rhubarb, leeks and onions. I added one handful (45g) per square metre, mixed it in to the soil and watered it.
Sulphate of ammonia is available in the members’ shop for £0.80 per kg.

Seedlings can get quite leggy if there is not enough light at this time of the year. It’s good practice to wait until mid-March to start sowing your seeds, unless you have a grow light.

In March, you can sow the following seeds outdoors:

Broad beans and peas (available in the members’ shop)
Cabbages, sprouting broccoli, cauliflower and calabrese
Leeks, onions and spring onions
Lettuces and spinach
Parsnips

Sow undercover:

Beetroot and radishes
Carrots and turnips
Cucumbers
Lettuces, oriental leaves, rocket, salad leaves

Sow indoors

Aubergines
Chillies
Tomatoes

March is a good time to prune your roses. Roses can be pruned quite hard to promote vigorous growth. You can find some good advice on how to prune your roses here. Once you have pruned your roses, give them a feed with rose fertiliser to give them a head start. We sell rose fertiliser in the shop, click here to see more information.

February 3, 2019February 3, 2021

What To Do On Your Plot in February

As the start of the new growing season approaches, we thought we’d start a new monthly round up of jobs you can do on your plot; starting with suggestions from some of the seed companies.

Whilst it is always tempting to sow seeds because the seed packet tells you to, local knowledge and keeping an eye on what Mother Nature has in store, are much better barometers for knowing what to do and when.

We’ll start this month with Marshalls Seeds’ monthly update, which you can read here. Do bear in mind all the seeds companies are giving us advice…but also trying to sell us their products! However, you can usually pick up some useful tips…and a recipe or two!

Kings Seeds’ blog post for February includes several flower-based jobs including getting your dahlias ready for re-growing if you dug them up over the winter. While Thompson & Morgan’s post is nicely split into the various categories of gardening, including jobs for your fruit garden.

If you’re looking for a useful website with lots of monthly tips and recipes, you can’t go wrong with Allotments & Gardens. See their list of jobs for February here.

Most will agree though, that veg plants like chillies, peppers and tomatoes can be started now. All these need a good amount of heat to help the seeds germinate, so a warm room or heated propagator is what’s needed. I’m about to get mine started as soon as I’ve warmed up my seed compost which has been stored outside. However, I’ve also been lucky enough to overwinter a pepper plant which is already flowering and producing fruit!

Whatever you are sowing, most companies recommend you sow your seeds in a seed compost rather than multi-purpose and we have two types in stock in the members’ shop – Clover Seed Compost and Levingtons F2 Seed Compost.

January 23, 2019February 22, 2020

Compost Sunday 2019

The traditional curtain raiser to our trading season is Compost Sunday when our members’ shop is open for members to stock up on composts and kick start their growing year.

This year we have several new composts for you, including a fully peat-free compost in response to requests from members.

The full list of what is available below.

Members will note we have two types of seed compost for this year. Kings Seeds recommend growers use seed compost in their seed trays because the fertiliser in multi-purpose compost can kill seeds.

We also have a small number of Jack’s Magic left over from last year’s stock.

The shop will be open from 10am to 12 noon.

April 26, 2018August 4, 2018

What to Sow in April

It may seem strange to be writing a post about what to sow in April, when April has nearly been and gone. However, this year has been a classic example of allotment gardeners needing to be guided by the weather and not by what it says on the back of a seed packet.

Normally, you would be able to sow most things from the end of March and into April. Generally the ground has warmed up sufficiently for seeds to be sown outside on our plots if they are being sown direct. However, if you remember, mid March saw a blanket of snow here in Hertfordshire which put paid to any idea of getting the season started for several weeks. The weather has improved greatly since, to the extreme of having a mini heatwave a week ago.

So what can you do when the weather is so up and down? Fleece or mini polytunnels can be used to warm seed beds and areas where direct sowing is going to be taking place, and can also be employed if the overnight temperatures plummet.

Root crops such as beetroot, radish, early carrots and parsnips can be sown this month. Make a narrow drill and sow the seeds thinly, cover up, water and hope! I often feel my first sowings don’t take. Beetroot can be started off in modules if you prefer and then transplanted once they have put on a bit of growth. Some people sow radish and parsnips in the same row. Radish will germinate quickly and can often be harvested before the parsnips (which are particularly slow to germinate) get going. I like to sow my parsnips in groups of three. The seeds are quite large and relatively easy to handle and if you get a little cluster of similar looking ‘weeds’ growing, you know it’s the parsnips!

Brassicas can also be sown now either in a seed bed or in modules. Whilst they are quick to germinate, they can be a bit high maintenance after that and don’t like being moved too often and then there’s the constant battle against the dreaded cabbage white butterfly and white fly.

If you are growing flowers, many of these can be started now. Some require direct sowing whilst others prefer to be sown in modules.

April 1, 2018March 6, 2020

News from the Plots – March 2018

Well March has certainly been a difficult month for allotment folk with snow and freezing temperatures on two weekends with the Beasts from the East blowing in. Milder weather may have followed but this has resulted in a lot of rain, especially towards the end of the month.

The Clothall Road site in the recent snow

With Mother Nature against us, it’s been hard to make progress on our allotments with even the quick draining soil at our Clothall Road site being too heavy and wet to do much digging.

Traditionally here in the south we’d be able to plant out first early potatoes that have been chitting nicely at home but many members have been loathe to plant them out with the ground so wet.
The colder temperatures have also meant the ground has been too cold to sow anything outdoors so many of the veg you can often risk sowing a row of in March, like carrots and parsnips, are still snug and warm in their seed packets.

It looks like there is warmer weather on the horizon so hopefully we can all get the growing season started soon.

March 26, 2018April 16, 2020

Recipe for a quick and easy potato salad

Recipe for a quick and easy potato salad

Ingredients
Salad potatoes such as Charlotte
1 tub of cheese and chive dip

Method
1. Cut potatoes in half or quarters so they are all similar sized pieces.
2. Boil potatoes as you would do usually and drain once cooked.
3. Place cooked potatoes into a bowl and add several spoonfuls of dip.
4. Stir to ensure all the potatoes are covered.
5. Serve immediately or allow to cool before eating if preferred.

January 27, 2018

The No-Dig Diary Jan/Feb 2018

BALGA tenant, Annie, updates us on her progress with experimenting with going no-dig. This month….paths!

‘Of course, no-dig doesn’t mean no work! The digging is delegated. You may do this already of course – you may have a co-worker or partner who loves the exercise! However you can still gain benefits from no-dig and find these heroes other important jobs on your plot.

With no-dig, the digging is done by the worms. Hopefully you have plenty, but you will certainly get a big influx with the arrival of all that lovely compost. The worms will draw the organic material into the soil and aerate it at the same time. As the soil is not being continually hefted around, an environment is gradually created that allows beneficial insects, microbes and fungi to thrive and prosper. As this happens, it gives the perfect soil structure for your fruit and veg.

However, there is still work to be done….plenty of compost to produce and distribute, but we don’t want to compact the ground so some paths would be useful.

There are several options for paths.
1. Grass paths. These look nice if well maintained. A grass path is fairly permanent though so perhaps other more temporary solutions would be useful to give flexibility year by year.
2. Walk on top of the compost.

The mulch underneath should stop weeds and the compost layer should not get muddy for a long time – not until the mulch has been broken down by the worms. This should take much longer than on the beds since you are walking on it and compacting it more than the beds.
3. Woodchip path. If you have a source of woodchip this is great. It shouldn’t get muddy and when you want a change, the woodchip will just rot down and add organic matter to your soil.

4. Gravel. The weed-proof layer here is black plastic (old compost bags work well!). Clear the ground, lay the plastic with a few drainage holes to prevent pools of water developing, cover with a layer of gravel. Cost of gravel may be an issue but it is re-usable when you want to take the path up and re-lay it elsewhere.

You will notice that the emphasis throughout is to try to stop the weeds growing thus saving time on weeding. We shall see!’

January 1, 2018

The ‘No Dig’ Diary – January 2018

Members may or may not have heard of this method of growing veg which has been espoused by Charles Dowding.
Clothall Road tenant, Annie, tells us more about it as we follow her on her ‘no dig’ journey.

‘I joined the library just before Christmas – I wanted learn more about pruning. What I found, was a book on compost. I like making compost. It’s very satisfying on so many levels. Perhaps that’s another diary thread for another time……but the compost book contained a chapter about no-dig gardening. How could that fail to catch the eye? That would be the best gardening revolution ever!
Several hours with Mr. Google followed, plus the chance arrival of an assortment of cardboard, and a few hours of free time over the Crimbo Limbo period. Fate decreed this was definitely worth a try.

Rather than try and convert the sceptics with technical persuasion (that can appear in later episodes), I shall just explain what I’ve done so far. Suffice it to say, ‘no-dig’ seems to mimic natural processes and therefore cannot be ‘wrong’.

One benefit of no-dig is to reduce weeding and the first step towards this is ‘sheet mulching’. I raked over a patch of ground (you can take out deep-rooted weeds if you like but this isn’t essential). Then I spread cardboard over the area. You can wet the cardboard but the ground right now is probably wet enough! Newspaper can be used instead of cardboard.

Then I covered the cardboard with a thick layer of compost (about 3 inches). I guess you could leave it at that, but in my garden the birds fling compost all over the place, so I covered the compost with whatever I could find – some bits of fleece, and old pea netting.

You could use black plastic but that would also keep the rain off. Aims of this mulching are twofold, firstly the mulch prevents light getting to weeds thus eventually killing them and secondly mulch gradually decomposes and is drawn down into the soil by worm activity.

Next time I shall explain ‘the path dilemma’ and hopefully tell what my solution will be.’

December 11, 2017December 21, 2020

Autumn Working Parties – Part Two

The second working party this autumn was held at the Clare Crescent site in Baldock where we had planted seed potatoes on the last cultivated plot at this site in the spring. This site is still managed by North Herts District Council.

A very loose experiment was run to see which half of it would produce the more tubers with half the plot being ridged up in the traditional way and the second half just dropping the seed potatoes in holes.

Although hardly scientific, the ridged half of the plot produced the best yield by a long way with very little being harvested from the non-ridged part. In fact it was more like trying to find where the rows of potatoes were on this half! Underground tree roots may have had something to do with it too though…

Surplus potatoes from the plot are being donated to Baldock’s Community Centre to help feed those in need this Christmas.

We’d love to have more volunteers help on working parties. They are a great way of building camaraderie and giving something back to the allotment association. The more we can do by members volunteering, the more money we can save from having to call experts in to do work which we could have done ourselves. ‘Banked’ volunteer hours are also used when applying for grants for future improvement work to our sites.

So keep an eye out for the next working parties and come and join in!